Studying the Rerouting of Empty Carriers during their Return Trips to Manage Rare Mobile Resources in a Physical Internet

To manage the unbalance between the needs in expensive containers (such as refrigerated containers or `reefers') in some places, and the fact that the available empty containers of this kind are in another place, it is necessary to move these empty containers efficiently between places. In this paper, we use the empty carriers during their return trips after a delivery, to move the empty containers from the locations where they are, to the locations were they are needed. First, we use a method based on the Stepping Stone algorithm to compute a minimal cost list of moves in the associated transportation problem. Second, we use a heuristic to choose carriers during their return trips, and compute low cost possible path deviations that needed to accomplish these moves. A numerical example is presented at the end.